Living a creative life
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I recently came across a compact disc recording of Elvis Presley's comeback special (officially titled "Singer Presents...Elvis!") that aired on NBC in December, 1968. Presley hadn't performed before a live audience in years. It was a dramatic example of a career comeback that, for a few years at…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I never get to travel as often I'd like, but I have had the opportunity to travel a little this summer. It reminds me how beneficial travel is to creative ventures and to life in general. Examples of creative travelers are well known. Van Gogh did some of…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've been reading a history of western classical music recently. In a chapter on Johannes Brahms, I found this passage very interesting. It's from an 1859 letter Brahms wrote to his friend, violinist Joseph Joachim, following one of the early performances of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. Earlier this year, I made a decision that involved what I call "jumping off a cliff." I left my conventional day job for a life of free-lance writing and photography. There was (and still is) a lot of risk involved, but my personal risk isn't the subject of…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've been reading Dr. Maxwell Maltz's 1960 book Psycho-Cybernetics. While the book occasionally strays into the neighborhood I call "crackpottery," there is a lot of useful information. I'm not a fan of the term "self-help," but it's the term that's commonly accepted, so we'll go with that. If…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I'll acknowledge up front that I'm not a sports fan. I'm not a sports fan to such an extent that I would barely know the difference between a 5-iron and a cricket bat. However, I appreciate that athletics have a lot in common with the creative arts. Success…
It's the time of year when schools all over are sending new graduates into the world. Even though it has been centuries years since I graduated from college, this time of year always calls to mind some of my favorite advice for graduates. Most people first heard this as the Baz Luhrman production "Everybody's Free…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. Last time, I recorded a few thoughts on my experience self-publishing my novel in paperback format via CreateSpace. I also published the book in digital format via Kindle DIrect Publishing (KDP) and wanted to share a few thoughts on that, also. In 2017, I self-published a short business…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've posted previously about the novel I've written and decided to self-publish. For anyone who might be considering this, I thought I would share some of my experience. This is by no means a comprehensive self-publishing guide, just a collection of my own thoughts and experiences that you…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I'm in the middle of reading a collection of some of Vincent Van Gogh's letters, primarily letters he wrote to his brother Theo over a period of 18 years. It's a fascinating body of work. Van Gogh wrote so many letters that they end up providing a sort…
